Enlightened ones

Monday, February 13, 2006

I love to draw. In fact, if I spent the same amount of time working, I'd be a millionaire a couple of times over by now! As the title suggests, I have loads and loads of my drawings just sitting around waiting for something exciting to happen to them.

The problem is the end result of an hour of concentrated sketching and frequent rubber use, doesn't end up with very interesting results...not all of the time the,though. There are those rare few occassions that keep me coming back to the drawing board when I can stand back, look at my drawing and think, "Who drew that?"

Here's oneA friend of mine said that I am so corny that if I get any cornier aliens will try and make their wierd-ass shape-signs on me!!

Anyways, I was thinking how cool it would be if I could put up my drawings on the Net and some Steven Speilberg comes along and gets inspired and offers to dedicate his next movie to my drawing (or better still, pay me for my drawing! ;)) So I finally went ahead and used a BLOG where I could upload my drawings for the world to laugh at!

You can check it out. It's the first link in my sidebar under the LINKS section. Don't worry...if you get scared to death, you can always come back here and get bored to death!

Saturday, February 11, 2006

We have a gorcery store about a block's distance from our place across the road. It's a small store, nothing fancy. Just your usual odds, bits and ends. We(or more precisely, I) do our gap-fill shopping here. We call it gap-fill because we do the main shopping from one of the big stores. This store helps us tide over from one main shopping to another by providing the small bits and pieces that have skipped our mind or we just happen to run out of in the middle of two main shopping trips.

My wife hates going down to this store. According to her, it's too far off. In fact, in her words "It's too far off from waaaaaay over there!" It's this phrase that baffles me the most. I have tried to analyze thngs from all possible angles but it still eludes me. Let me explain and then you can tell me if you can do any better.

We go main grocery shopping atleast twice a week. That's how long fresh vegetables last in our refrigerator, according to my wife so we have to restock lest we run out of health food(huh?). We roam all the aisles and go over some aisles twice because we forgot the shopping list at home and buy as things come to mind. At this point, I like to point out that the store is a fairly big one and it takes better part of two hours to do our crazy zig-zag dance and finally decide we have bought enough of the list(the one we forgot at home!)We have just walked three football fields end to end but my wife is not tired. If it were upto her she'd do the same thing again..a couple of times over! It's impossible to think that this is the same woman who refuses to walk the 30 meteres to the store and back! So what is it with Women and Shopping?!

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

My wife: "I want to buy this dress."Me: "But you already have a brown dress!"My wife: "I have a Sienna dress not a brown one. And this isn't brown, it's Earth Brown."All I can manage is "!!!"

Colors. It's a woman thing. Aside from the primary colors most men can manage brown, grey, black, white and orange. With a college degree he can also manage, off-white, cream, olive, turquoise and silver. With a PhD some men manage apple green, mustard, blood red and rose red. Married men can differentiate between gold and silver too but that's just because the HAVE TO! But that's the extent of it. Women on the other have a pallette having in excess of the 16 million shades that a computer monitor manages. An average Jane can name more shades of red than an average Joe's list of ALL colors...twice over! I mean, she can find shades of white in a blank paper!

Saturday, February 04, 2006

I am a muslim. Not as avid as I'd like to be but I do try my best, Al Hamd O Lillah. I believe that if you have the urge, Allah will guide you. Allah does not guide you as a shepherd. That is not His Sunnah (preferred way of doing something) Guiding as a shepherd was the Sunnah or Sifat (property) of the Messengers of Allah. And their time has long passed.

The big events impact our lives and force us to think but it's the small events that shape our lives. To recognize Allah, we need only to look into ourselves. At ourselves. We are a super-complex Multi-celled organism. Our brain is the epitome of multi-tasking. Our reflex actions and concious motions together form the most complex of movements. Walking, for instance, is a form of controlled falling. Speaking involves a huge array of muscles with nano-second precision. Our hearts beat constantly for ALL our lives. Never a moments rest. Can man even create a single cell? Or anything even remotely close to it? From scratch!?!

Islam(religion of the muslims) is a religion of peace. In fact the word itself is derived from Salaam which means peace. Peace with friends, peace with neighbours, peace with onself and peace with one's enemies. A muslims response to a personal attack should be a peaceful prayer in favour of the attacker. That is the Sunnah of our Prophet Mohammed (Salalaho Alaihe Wassalam).

Prophet Mohammed (Salalaho Alaihe Wassalam) is held in the highest respect after Allah Himself. He was the most beloved of all Allah's creation. Allah has talked to Musa (Alaihe Salaam) and invited Issa (Alaihe Salaam) to spend time with Him until the time nears the end of the world. But Allah loves Mohammed (Salalaho Alaihe Wassalam) the most. To ridicule Mohammed (Salalaho Alaihe Wassalam) is a transgression. I don't know if this warrants a Call To Jihad or not. Probably not. But it does warrant voicing anger, resentment and repulsion to the act and that is what most Muslims are trying to do/show around the world. At the same time I have tried to explain why it is a cause of so much resentment and anger on part of the muslims.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

"So I take a left then?", I ask my wife. And she says,"No right. The left will take us to..". When I drive, I need a navigator. And more often than not, my wife is my navigator.

My wife is great with directions. It's like she just knows, you knwo? You take her to one of her friend's house where she's never been before and she can sleep walk to it the next time. Explain her directions to your place and she'll end up drawing a small map and proving that she knows a shorter way between your home and where you work than road you have been taking home from work....or the past 25 years! I mean, if it was still open to discussion, she'd prove that the shortest line between two points is NOT a straight line!!!

Me, I am the guy who can loose his way to the bathroom. If you hand me a train, I'd try to take a right where the tracks go left! I am really not good with giving or taking directions. After seven years(has it really been that long!!) of married life, my wife has developed navigation as a second nature. She will automatically change all my RIGHTs to my LEFTs to make sure we reach our destination. Without her, I'd truly be lost.